About Me

My name is Sonja Black. I am a writer, an editor, a spouse, a parent, and a trans woman. I drink far more hot chocolate than is probably good for me.

I come to editing through my path as a writer. It was not an easy path.

I started writing in High School. Short stories, because I could not write long ones. I would have ideas that felt large and grand, as epic as any of the Asimov or Heinlein I was reading at the time. But when I would try to write them, I'd be lucky to eke out three pages. I could not understand where my story went? What was the secret to the engaging, 300 page novels that kept me up past my bedtime?

Eventually I gave up. I decided it must be a gift you’re either born with or aren’t, and the evidence suggested I wasn’t. Ididn’t write anything for about 20 years.

I went to college, got a degree in technical writing, and made a career out of writing documentation for software developers. (I still do that too, so if you happen to need any technical writing or editing, please contact me.)

Then in 2005, someone talked me into trying National Novel Writing Month. I went into it with no high expectations, but found a wild, exhilarating ride. I finished the month with a 100,000 word first draft of a fantasy novel that miraculously formatted out to about 300 pages.

I was hooked. I have no idea how those two fallow decades helped me bridge the chasm from three pages to three hundred. But I do know that taking one more go at what I’d always failed at before changed the course of my life.

Editing

I got into this editing because people kept telling me I was good at it. That, and the Great Recession of 2008.

I did a lot of critique-swapping with other writers while polishing up that first fantasy novel. I was looking for pointed, helpful, specific feedback that would actually help me improve my work, so that’s the kind of feedback I strove to give back. I’d read their chapters very carefully, think hard about the parts that didn’t seem quite right so I could explain what felt not-right to me and offer suggestions for how they could fix it.

Time and again, other writers told me how much they appreciated the feedback and how helpful it was. Now and again, people would even tell me I should charge money for that." So when the recession came and the company I was at laid off half the work force, the path was obvious.

I started doing it purely for the income. But that isn't why I kept at it.

I edit now for the sake of those 20 years I spent believing I couldn't write. This journey of learning how to write and edit novels has taught me worlds about how to write. More than that, it has taught me worlds about how narrative works, and what I was missing back in high school

Narrative is an art. But it is also a science, one I have dedicated more than a decade to studying. I’ve learned a lot, and have realized that every bit of it can be taught. None of it is any kind of gift you have to be born with.

Sometimes I wonder where I would be if I’d had just one teacher in high school or college who understood the art and science of narrative well enough to teach me. Where might I be if I had 20 more years retroactively added to my writing career?

I can’t get those 20 years back. But I can stop other people from erroneously deciding they don’t have the gift. There is no gift. It’s a skill like any other, that can be learned and can be taught. Yes, I edit for the money. But I also edit to help other people persevere where I did not.

Oh. And that fantasy novel? I’ll get it out into print one of these days. I have a gorgeous cover just waiting for it and everything...